The recognition of the efficiency and benefits of community-based corrections is increasing, leading to the placement of a wider range of offenders with community-based supervisory agencies. In the supervision of original offenders during probation and parole periods, it is necessary for a supervising officer to establish a plan to control the behavior and activities of the offenders and to treat the offender""s undesirable behavioral traits, social and medical problems, and negative personal characteristics. Such plans are developed from experience and from the use of well-known assessment tools which collect factors identifying characteristics of behavior and personality of the offender to be supervised. Commonly used assessment tools for this purpose are the Level of Services Inventoryxe2x80x94Revised (LSI-R), the Client Management Classification system (CMC), The American Society of Addictive Medicine criteria (ASAM), the Brown Attention Deficit Disorder Scale and the Iowa Classification System. The supervising officer must employ these tools to try to establish a maximally effective treatment and control plan for the offender in order to assist the offender to return to the general population as a law-abiding individual.
In current practice, a supervising officer obtains and reviews the assessment tool results for the particular offender and then tries to mentally arrange the assessment scores to choose among levels of treatment intensity and levels of control intensity to be employed with the individual offender. This is a time-consuming and difficult project and also permits inconsistent supervision plans among offenders with similar assessment scores. Existing methods may result in excessive treatment or control of the offender resulting in a lack of responsivity and a waste of supervisory agency resources. Consequently, an offender may be provided insufficient control for community safety and inadequate treatment for individual improvement.
The present invention provides a data processing system and method for entering a multiplicity of demographic, behavioral, personality, and life skills factors for a group of offenders to be supervised which factors can then be sorted into sets corresponding to each of the individual offenders. The sets of factors can then be weighted and composite scores for control level and for treatment level can be computed. The control level score and the treatment level score may be arranged in a grid of sixteen cells which are identified by two factors: level of treatment and level of control, with each cell corresponding to one of four levels of control (low, moderate, elevated, and high) and to one of four levels of treatment (low, moderate, elevated, and high). Hence a first cell is characterized as low control-low treatment, while the diagonally opposing cell in the grid is characterized as high control-high treatment. The remaining fourteen cells are arranged according to the set of control and treatment levels remaining such that control level is arranged on a first axis and treatment level is arranged on the orthogonal axis to the first axis of the grid. For a given offender, the factors used in determining the control score and the treatment score for that offender are used to predict the level of control and level of treatment which will be effective in supervision of that offender. The predicted level of control and the predicted level of treatment are displayed in the grid of possible levels and the cell corresponding to the two levels is highlighted by differing screen intensity or color or by other similar indicating means. The supervising officer then may examine the grid of possible treatment and control levels and quickly identify the combination of treatment level and control levels which is recommended for the particular offender based on the assessment tools and other evaluative factors employed.
The invention also provides a set of descriptive information which may be reviewed from the display of the grid which relates to the specific offender and that offender""s individual assessment factors and which also provides a speedy reference to useful information about the factors and the assessment tools which have been employed in determining the factors related to the particular offender. The invention provides efficient links to displays of appropriate supervisory responses when dealing with the offender and provides schedules of responses for each of the sixteen combinations of control level and treatment level available for guidance.
The present invention is embodied in software which was designed to match the supervised criminal offender with treatment resources and to afford consistent planning for offenders of like charcteristics. The invention provides a systematic approach to assessing the risk and needs of offenders and matching them with the treatment resources and the supervision strategies that the local community correction agency has available. The invention can also identify offenders who are high-risk limit setters and those who may have gang ties or other antisocial characteristics as described by Bonta et al.
The invention system is based on internet and intranet technologies, linking the user quickly to selective parts of the data outputs as randomly selected by the user. The preferred embodiment employs the following application and system software: Microsoft(copyright) Internet Explorer web browser, Microsoft(copyright) SQL Server(trademark) database engine, Allaire(trademark) ColdFusion(trademark) web application server software, Microsoft(copyright) IIS(trademark) internet information server, and Microsoft(copyright) Windows NT(trademark) network operating system software.
The invention receives assessment factors from such assessment tools as the Level of Services Inventoryxe2x80x94Revised (LSI-R) (for measuring risk of criminal behavior and need for treatment), Client Management Classification instrument (CMC) (for case plan development), American Society of Addictive Medicine criteria (ASAM) (for measurement of substance abuse treatment needs), the Brown Attention-Deficit Disorder Scale, the Iowa Classification System (ICS) (for evaluation of risk of continued criminal activity), and the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. The invention synthesizes the information, and uses it to plot a position on a sixteen-grid matrix.
The primary display of the invention consists of two axes; risk (control) and need (treatment). The invention operates on the principle that to supervise offenders, one must assess both risk and need and use that information in developing a supervision and treatment strategy. The invention breaks the client population into four major groups, then into sixteen subgroups. Each subgroup has specific control and treatment options which staff may choose depending on the offender""s case management history and available resources. The invention is fluid in its graphical display of the appropriate risk and need scores depending on an offender""s response to supervision. Generally recategorization occurs after successful completion of programming or in response to violative behavior. Using the computer""s mouse xe2x80x9cto pop the screen openxe2x80x9d the supervising agent finds the supervision and treatment strategies available to work with a particular offender. Radio buttons on the left side of the computer screen link to additional information such as suggested responses to violating behaviors, thresholds, examples of similar offender behaviors, the set of assessment factors related to the offender, and possible sanctions. Displayed on the right side of the screen are common definitions of terms and a bibliography of research material which may be reviewed. For example, an agent exploring the use of the LSI-R could check the bibliography and find the xe2x80x9cbig fourxe2x80x9d factors pertaining to antisocial issues in Bonta""s work.
The invention provides the offender""s supervisor with options for treatment and supervision and automatically displays the aggregate success rate for those options when previously used by other supervising staff of the local community corrections agency. Additionally the invention allows the development of protocol and policy to provide the best practice for managing scarce resources. For example, in addition to a xe2x80x9ccontinuum of sanctionsxe2x80x9d the invention also suggests a xe2x80x9ccontinuum of treatmentxe2x80x9d. The subtle benefit of developing a protocol for a continuum of treatment is that staff is not always being required to xe2x80x9cratchet upxe2x80x9d responses for an offender""s failure to comply. The invention also allows the agency to establish response thresholds and to establish appropriate responses for all violating behaviors.
A supervising agent may review the assessment scores that triggered the placement of a particular offender by selecting the appropriate radio button to cause display of the assessment scores for that offender. By entering specific data about an offender, including demographics, assessment results, criminal history, and supervision status, the invention will synthesize the information and provide users with a range of case management interventions consistent with an offender""s risk level and criminogenic needs (or dynamic risk factors). By evaluating information unique to the individual offender, the invention assists the supervisor in case programming which is targeted and matched to the offender profile, thereby maintaining the principle of responsivity.
The invention is designed to interface with a database to provide outcomes on offender success rates, program effectiveness, client profiles, and other information.
The primary objective of the invention is to assist the supervising agent, the agent""s supervisor, and court officers in selecting the most desirable intermediate sanction based on risk, need, and responsivity. It also helps select the least restrictive alternative to revocation, commensurate with community safety, deemed appropriate to control or change offender behavior.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide an efficient method to synthesize a collection of behavior, personality and skill factors of a parolee or probationee and to identify and quantify the level of control and treatment intensity which should be employed in supervision of the offender.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a data processing system which can be employed by adult offender supervising agencies to obtain a graphic indication of the preferred level of control and treatment to be employed with a particular offender.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a data processing system which can receive and store a number of assessment tool factors related to each of a number of individual offenders and which can sort, arrange and store the factors as sets of data corresponding to the individual offender, further allowing a supervising officer to display and print on paper the factors and supervision grid for the individual offender selected for evaluation and supervision.
Another object of the invention is to provide a data processing system which provides a supervisory tool which suggests consistent treatment over a range of criminal offenders and contextually links information for use by the supervising agent in dealing with the offender to be supervised.
It is further an object of the invention to provide a web based data processing system which enables remote users to access data about a population of offenders which is stored on a central storage medium.